Probably, hardly more bitter struggle than the one between Intel and AMD. And now, when rumors about a takeover of one company to another again gaining momentum, we can only inflame the discussion. CES ended and the sudden absence of the General Director of Intel, along with AMD’s position in the market, made people think. Almost every analyst takes the position that the merger of AMD and Intel is fantastic. But there is no smoke without fire.
The merger of Intel and AMD: possible?
Merge Intel and AMD will give one company full control over the entire market of personal computers. ARM simply is not credible neither in normal server or in personal space, so you can consider this company a threat to the dominance of Intel in the market and in the foreseeable future nothing will change. To justify the merger, AMD and Intel will have to prove that their Union will encourage companies that have currently no plans to aggressively invade in the PC industry, to begin to do to overcome the dominant player. But it has little chance. No the controller won’t fall for it.
Moreover, it is not clear that each of the companies that would need another. Even if you think that the technology AMD cooler “those”, the integration of AMD technology in the manufacturing process Intel will be Oh how difficult. Intel might prefer to buy the production of graphics processors AMD to integrate it into their own, but the company has stolen more than enough members of the GPU command AMD (and AMD won’t sell the series, which anchors it inside the Xbox and PlayStation). Intel, of course, could buy the AMD x86 business without any legal problems, but the risk of further lawsuits as a company with a monopoly in the PC market.
Where the legs of the rumors grow?
The reason for the gossip, apparently, was the wonderful performance of Lisa su CES. Intel may try to santity Director General of the AMD — but it’s not necessary to buy the company. And it is easy to notice the difference between Intel, which for several months treats the acting Director-General, and AMD, General Director which became a rising star.
But in this case it is unclear how this new Director will fit into the narrative of the company. Intel and AMD have a few different benchmarks and sources of income. Intel spends billions of dollars to position themselves in emerging markets in 5G, the Internet of things, self-driving cars, AI, and other. AMD, by contrast, adheres to the basic core and gently attacking the markets with Radeon Instinct, trying to improve their position.
AMD losing position in the PC and server space, looking for a new role. It is expected that the 7-nm Ryzen will provide the company with new sales, while searches Intel less defined, as she is busy with new markets.
No matter what company you prefer or which processors you like more, there is no doubt that companies are now positioned slightly differently, building plans of their future income. It is unclear how the weak common position of Intel. If the company can not cope with capacity of 10-nm production, we will say that the delay in the 10-nm were the reason for the emergence of new problems. If 10-nm will work, after 12-18 months, the situation for Intel will look very different. In General, there are no shocks or major mergers between competitors is possible not to wait.
But it would be interesting. It is possible to debate in our chat in Telegram.